Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Today, I put just under 70 peaches in a big brown envelope, addressed it to a new friend in Budapest, and let our peaches from Van Meter, Iowa roll!

The kids were excited to hear that their peaches journey had begun. I cannot wait to hear what the students estimate in math class. They will talk about distance and time.

Any guesses how long this journey will take?

And something else exciting happened today.

Five more teachers joined our "Peachy Project" and are going to have their students ROLL peaches too for "Follow That Peach."

I have added Staci, Tracy, Kathy, Jennifer, and a brand new connection from South Burlington, Vermont, Caliope, to the sidebar of this blog. I also added another table to the Google Doc we have all been collaborating in for this project. The new participants will now add their information and we will come up with a travel schedule for them as well.

This is turning out to be such an amazing way to start the year! The students and teachers are having such a great time learning together, connecting, and collaborating.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Last spring, my friend and teaching partner John Schu, the teacher librarian at Brook Forest Elementary in Oak Brook, Illinois, and I shared the Follow That Peach site from Penguin Books. They had created this site to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Roald's Dahl's classic book, James and the Giant Peach.

As the site states,

"Join the mission to roll James's Giant Peach around the world.

In Roald Dahl’s classic novel James and the Giant Peach, an enormous escaped rhinoceros from London Zoo has eaten James’s parents. And it gets worse! James is packed off to live with his two really horrible aunts, Sponge and Spiker. Poor James is miserable, until something peculiar happens and James finds himself on the most wonderful and extraordinary journey aboard a giant peach...

John and I couldn't wait to plan how our students would connect to celebrate this event.

Last weekend on Twitter I met Sarah Ducharme, a teacher librarian in Budapest, who also wanted to partner with us during this wonderful project. Sarah and I started collaborating with our teachers and put our ideas into a Google Document that we shared.

I met with Eldonna Skahill, Jennifer Stephens, and Ann Volk, the third grade teachers at Van Meter, and using the FUN Teach the Peach peach pack and a lot of creativity, we planned social studies, science, math, literacy, technology, and library projects that would take place over the next few months.

Next, I sent an email and Google Doc to John, Sarah, and two other friends, Donna Kouri also in Illinois and Stephen Gagnon in New Hampshire, inviting them to roll peaches around the world with us. We were so excited when everyone said "YES".

From the site, you can send a "Virtual Peach" and see if it will get to 50 people around the world (You must be 13 years old or older to create a Virtual Peach, so this would be something fun to do as a family).

You can also send a "Paper Peach" in the mail and track its journey on the peach itself. We will also be telling the stories of our peaches on this blog too.

The first thing we did at Van Meter was to create our peaches that we would send off for their trip around the world. (You can get the paper peaches here from the Follow That Peach site). Every student, several teachers and the administrators all created their very own peach....even with its very own name.

As our peach travels, they will pick up other "Places" and end up back to it's creator in a few months. The recipients will even share why they love James and the Giant Peach at each stop.

On Monday, Van Meter will send their peaches off. First stop, Budapest to Sarah's 3rd graders.

Roald Dahl's birthday is September 13th and this year will be extra special in our libraries and schools.

This blog tells the story of five schools coming together to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James and the Giant Peach through Penguin Group's "Follow That Peach" project. They will connect, learn, and have fun as their peaches travel around the world.

Our group includes.....

Sarah Ducharme, elementary teacher librarian in Budapest

Caliope Flickinger, Librarian at Chamberlin School in South Burlington, Vermont

Stephen Gagnon, 4th grader teacher at Stratham Memorial School in New Hampshire